Monday, December 14, 2015

It's becoming a Christmas tradition for people to say "It sure don't feel like Christmas;" but this year, when the current weather in Manhattan feels like it was shipped here via time machine from Memorial Day, and the only white stuff for miles is the blizzard of dandruff blowing off of Donald Trump's hairjob, it's even more of a disconnect to match my inner clock to the calendar date. Which is probably why the first stab at this year's Christmas Compilation felt like Music To Nap By. Not that naps aren't a bad thing (except when you take them alone); it's just that when it feels like June outside and the sun still dips below the horizon around 4PM, your brain either short-circuits or shuts down—or both—which means you need an even bigger kick in the musical drawers to get up and party.So (three versions later) here it is, this year's mix of all-girl goodies, back-of-the-garage boppers, and blues-heavy rockers, in two zip files. Shout-out to Venice Beach Barry with Track 23: Steph, Shannon, Megan and Leesa with Track 11; everybody watching The Flash with Track 1 (Gorilla City on Earth 2!); and everybody in Oz with the Bonus Track.I wish you all the best of the season. Merry Happy, everybody.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Wondering what movies to see before they all get crowded out
by Hunger Games 4 and holiday Oscar bait?

The Sure Things: Room and Spotlight

The less you know about either of these, the better. But
even if you read the novel or read the Boston Globe fourteen years ago, you
will not be disappointed. Spotlight is the best reporter movie since All The
President’s Men, and a way better Boston movie than Black Mass. And Room is
alternately sad-heartbreaking and joyful-heartbreaking.

On second thought, just leave him there.

The Crowd Pleaser: The Martian

AKA Mars Needs Potatoes.It’s smart and fun and uplifting while you’re watching it, but on
reflection it’s like the outer space version of one of those star-studded 50’s
Cecil B DeMille extravaganzas, where the whole is smaller than the sum of its
parts, and the thrills are ultimately bogus because let’s face it, none of the
A-list actors are ever in any real danger. Except Sean Bean.(Poor Sean. The older he gets, the more I
wish he’d been James Bond instead of Pierce Brosnan.)

The Smart Thriller: Sicario

Remember how LA Confidential kept turning into a different
movie every twenty minutes? This film doesn’t have that many jagged moves, but
the movie it starts out to be is as different from what it turns into as
Alice’s Victorian England is from Wonderland. A morally ambiguous poisoned
cookie of a film that truly deserves to be compared to a Graham Greene thriller
or a John le Carrè novel, unlike

The Faux Thriller: Bridge Of Spies

Be warned. Reviewers calling this film “morally
ambiguous” or comparing it to John le Carrè are drinking the Spielberg
Kool-Aid. There is never any question that Tom Hanks’ James Donovan is morally
correct in everything he does, and having at least one person every ten minutes
confront him by acting like a goose-stepping anti-Communist d-bag is not drama, it’s
propaganda. Watch it for (a) the skillful way that Spielberg makes that
propaganda feel like a real ethical struggle, instead of a foregone moral
conclusion, and (b) Mark Rylance’s Rudolf Abel, whose every line and look hints
at a fascinating but unknowable inner life.

The Comfort Thriller: SPECTRE

Part of the thrill of seeing Casino Royale was thinking:
“Holy crap—the Bond movies can go anywhere now!” Part of the
disappointment of seeing SPECTRE is thinking: “Crap—they’ve just re-set the
Timothy Dalton status quo.” (And—I know it’s a big spoiler, but the pun is too
good to pass up—they’ve also turned Blofeld into Bro-feld.) In a way, it’s the
first old school James Bond movie Daniel Craig has made, which to me—given all
that Casino Royale potential—made it like the British version of Mission Impossible 5: Our Hero Goes Rogue Again To Save The World.

The Thrill-less Gothic: Crimson Peak

Absolutely gorgeous to look at, this film would have been an
instant classic if the script had been given as much work as the art
direction.But the horror movie of the
trailers is actually a Gothic Bad House story, with a heroine who is like an
American Bronte cousin, ghosts (all female) who actually aid her, and a mansion
that is, at one and the same time, both claustrophobic and as wide-open as
Grand Central Station. I walked out of this film wishing I could cast Tom
Hiddleston as Percy Shelley, Mia Wasikowska as Mary Shelley, Jessica Chastain
as Caroline Lamb, and Tom Hardy as Byron, and just have them tell ghost stories
for two hours.

The Near Ms: Suffragette

Sometimes the way that a film is,
well, filmed, gets in the way of the story it wants to tell. This film is all
hand-held cameras, natural lighting, immense close-ups, and swift editing,
which actually kept me at arm’s reach instead of bringing me closer to the
characters. In other words, it’s a period piece filmed in a modern-day manner.
You may have a different opinion about whether or not this works, but I walked
out thinking that if I stripped the dialogue away, I would have no idea what was
going on in the story. That said, there’s a great story here. I just thought it
paled in comparison to the way this one is told.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

It's Halloween! When we all treat processed chocolate like one of the three basic food groups.

Halloween! When we lose count of all the little girls dressed as Frozen characters and the big girls half-dressed as things we don't want the little girls to see.

Halloween! When we all dress up like monsters so the monsters won't come and get us, which means we'll all be seeing a ton of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump masks over the next few days.

Halloween! Where we listen to, uhm, uh . . . song about how women are all witches?

Yeah. There's not really a tradition of music-listening for this holiday, which means I had to dig a little to make a mix for it. I tried to stay away from the obvious, assuming that you're all as tired as I am of hearing Bobby "Boris" Pickett singing "The Monster Mash," never mind all that women-are-witches crap, so I'm guessing a lot of these will be new to you.